House extends warrantless email snooping for 5 more years

The House voted Wednesday to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows government agencies to monitor international communications—including email—without warrants.

The House of Representatives agrees: The government should still be allowed to keep reading your emails.

By a vote of 301-118, the House approved H. R. 5949, introduced by Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), a bill to extend 2008’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for another five years. Intended to allow government agencies to monitor potential terrorist communications, FISA also allows them to monitor American citizens’ emails, as well as phone calls, without probable cause if they’re used in international conversation. And if they believe it might help them get closer to Al-Qaeda, agents can spy on domestic emails too, and all without a warrant.

Critics consider FISA a gross invasion of privacy. Twenty major advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the PEN American Center, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, all signed a letter strongly condemning the extension.

A former senior politics reporter for the Daily Dot, Kevin Collier focuses on privacy, cybersecurity, and issues of importance to the open internet. Since leaving the Daily Dot in March 2016, he has served as a reporter for Vocativ and a cybersecurity correspondent for BuzzFeed.